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Why is PowerPC software still so expensive ?

L

Lastic

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 19, 2016
879
757
North of the HellHole
Rant mode.

Occasionaly I will find a utility or a program which I need for my Macs.

Usually I end up installing the newest version on the Intel rMBP and the older PPC supported version on my Powerbook G4 and/or G5 .

For example I had been using Little Snitch for years , decided it was worth it's money , bought a LS 3 license
and got a free LS 2 license on top for the Powerbook.

BusyCal however, still wanted me to pay the same price for the older PPC supported version as the newest Intel version ?

So now, I'm experimenting with Juniper Network Gear and setup an IPSEC VPN .
However there is no Juniper VPN client that works on Mac, nor Windows 10 so I had to resort to VPNtracker.

This VPN Client has a reputation of being compatible with lots of Network vendor VPN's but it's expensive.

Mailed them to ask the price of the 6.4.7 version ( last one that runs Universal binary on OS X 10.5-10.6).

https://www.equinux.com/eqnetwork/s...=169&dGID[169]=0&gID[]=67&dGID[67]=1&h=vpntws

109 EUR one-time fee which is the same price as their VPNTracker 9 .

Or buy the VPN 365 which would let me install all versions from 6.4.7 to 9 for the yearly price of
85 EUR .

Luckily I found the CD-ROM on Amazon.de for (drumroll) 16 EUR + shipping = 31 EUR !

IMG_2893.JPG


Why do software companies keep charging these high prices for non-supported software which will receive no
updates since we cannot go beyond the PowerPC architecture and OS X 10.5.8 ?
 
IPSec isn't the issue , that's a standard , it's how some vendors and/or their VPN Gateways/Concentrator/Firewalls treat an IPSEC tunnel.

You can try out the VPN Tracker 6 Personal version for 30 days but it will disconnect your session every 3 minutes.
 
Offering such unsupported and niche software for free seems like a no loss action in my opinion, so I don't know why any company wouldn't do it.

It won't cut into contemporary sales as the user base is so tiny, and they can say they don't like to charge people for no longer supported software etc.
 
tevion5 said:
Offering such unsupported and niche software for free seems like a no loss action in my opinion, so I don't know why any company wouldn't do it.

It won't cut into contemporary sales as the user base is so tiny, and they can say they don't like to charge people for no longer supported software etc.
Click to expand...

Indeed or at least offer a reduction for an older,unsupported version, I don't mind if it's a good working product to pay for it.
 
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tevion5 said:
Offering such unsupported and niche software for free seems like a no loss action in my opinion, so I don't know why any company wouldn't do it.

It won't cut into contemporary sales as the user base is so tiny, and they can say they don't like to charge people for no longer supported software etc.
Click to expand...
Flip that around though.

Your argument implies that it would make a future customer out of the PowerPC user because you've let them have your outdated software for free. And that may be true. But you also state that it's a tiny user base. So, just how much potential money are you making in the future off this tiny user base? Versus the REAL money you make off that tiny user base when they are forced to buy the app?

Even Apple still charges for System 7.6 and above.
 
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Lastic said:
Indeed or at least offer a reduction for an older,unsupported version, I don't mind if it's a good working product to pay for it.
Click to expand...

That's true, but I wouldn't pay €100 for something that only works on Mac OS 9.
 
eyoungren said:
Flip that around though.

Your argument implies that it would make a future customer out of the PowerPC user because you've let them have your outdated software for free. And that may be true. But you also state that it's a tiny user base. So, just how much potential money are you making in the future off this tiny user base? Versus the REAL money you make off that tiny user base when they are forced to buy the app?

Even Apple still charges for System 7.6 and above.
Click to expand...

I suppose the company will take the cold profit maximising if they think the good will generated from generosity is worth less to them than a small number of high priced purchased.

Side note, do Apple still SELL System 7.6? I am actually very sympathetic to companies that charge for ancient software but make it readily available.

What rubs me the wrong way is companies like EA who will hunt down like a blade runner pirated copies of SimCity original from 1988 for Macintosh, yet not offer it themselves for purchase from any outlet at all. If they truly don't care about profit, but don't want to risk legal issues around tolerating any sort of piracy associated with that intellectual property, surely it wouldn't kill them to host a compressed 800k image off their own FTP server, even if they wanted to put a €1 paywall infront of it.
 
tevion5 said:
I suppose the company will take the cold profit maximising if they think the good will generated from generosity is worth less to them than a small number of high priced purchased.

Side note, do Apple still SELL System 7.6? I am actually very sympathetic to companies that charge for ancient software but make it readily available. What rubs me the wrong way is companies like EA who will hunt down pirated copies of SimCity original from 1988 for Macintosh, yet not offer it themselves for purchase from any outlet at all.
Click to expand...
They do (Apple). Just wouldn't know where you would go about asking to buy it.

But I know that it's 7.6 and above because the maximum version you can find in the public domain for download on Apple's site is 7.5.5.

It's kind of odd that they'd cut it off right there, but not too odd. The later versions of System 7 were the beginning of the common OS 8/9 era. OS 8 and 9 simply improved on the interface and added features, they didn't make over the system like System 7 made over System 6.
 
eyoungren said:
They do (Apple). Just wouldn't know where you would go about asking to buy it.

But I know that it's 7.6 and above because the maximum version you can find in the public domain for download on Apple's site is 7.5.5.

It's kind of odd that they'd cut it off right there, but not too odd. The later versions of System 7 were the beginning of the common OS 8/9 era. OS 8 and 9 simply improved on the interface and added features, they didn't make over the system like System 7 made over System 6.
Click to expand...
Ha, they would have sued macintoshgarden instantly, if they were still interested in selling os7/8/9 or if they were interested in keeping rights on intellectual property for that legacy software.
Thinking about "VPN Tracker": it doesn't make any difference, if you use a brandnew intel-MacBookPro or an outdated PowerBook to establish a VPN-Connection to a remote host. The option to get the host work by remote-access is what makes the software count.
 
Software costs money to develop and to support. That cost doesn't really go down even if someone is only using an old version. There are probably several instances where it is in fact more expensive to support older platforms or older versions of software. (We're certainly aware of the complications involved in, say, maintaining Dropbox on 10.5 and 10.6.)

Plus, VPN is a networking service, often similar to dropbox in that its susceptible to protocol/API changes over the years. I can see newer versions of software clients on proprietary or easy-packaging VPN systems being merited for things like keys, making sure that the software being used is up to the latest cryptographic standards, etc.

There may even be different levels of work, if this is something you can rely on recent releases of Mac OS X to have on their own, but you'll need to do special work to support a PPC (or, heck, IDK, Windows 2000) clientele.

If I were a software developer, I would probably charge for my older versions, if I even sold them at all.

If I were a service or infrastructure vendor with clients clamoring support for their old hardware, I'd charge for the work I was doing on that.
 
I used to use Tunnelblick on my PM when I was still on OSX right up to this year so I could use my PrivateInternetAccess VPN (OpenVPN based) solution, they only recently stopped updates for the PPC version but it still worked fine. (https://tunnelblick.net/)

I remember years ago I used that eQuinux VPN Tracker to attach to our corp. VPN using IpSec.
 
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